| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: discovery of some little interest. Poking and burrowing into the
heaped-up rubbish in the corner, unfolding one and another
document, and reading the names of vessels that had long ago
foundered at sea or rotted at the wharves, and those of merchants
never heard of now on 'Change, nor very readily decipherable on
their mossy tombstones; glancing at such matters with the
saddened, weary, half-reluctant interest which we bestow on the
corpse of dead activity -- and exerting my fancy, sluggish with
little use, to raise up from these dry bones an image of the old
towns brighter aspect, when India was a new region, and only
Salem knew the way thither -- I chanced to lay my hand on a
The Scarlet Letter |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: glanced round the room; and besides the bedstead and centre table,
could see no other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude
shelf, the four walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man
striking a whale. Of things not properly belonging to the room,
there was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one
corner; also a large seaman's bag, containing the harpooneer's
wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there was a
parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf over the
fire-place, and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed.
But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to
the light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to
Moby Dick |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: physician can be thought to insult his patient, when he tells
him:--"Friend, do you suppose there is nothing wrong with you?
why, you have a fever. Eat nothing to-day, and drink only water."
Yet no one says, "What an insufferable insult!" Whereas if you
say to a man, "Your desires are inflamed, your instincts of
rejection are weak and low, your aims are inconsistent, your
impulses are not in harmony with Nature, your opinions are rash
and false," he forthwith goes away and complains that you have
insulted him.
LXVIII
Our way of life resembles a fair. The flocks and herds are
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
